The Ends of Harm

The Moral Foundations of Criminal Law

Victor Tadros

Outlines the author's original argument for the justification of punishment, the 'duty view', advancing debates on the philosophy of punishment and criminal law

Offers a provocative critique of the leading moral theories of punishment, including retributivism and communicative views

Provides a systematic exploration of the fundamental moral principles governing the permission to harm others for the sake of the greater good, making a contribution to the understanding of harm in moral philosophy

The Ends of Harm

The Moral Foundations of Criminal Law

Victor Tadros

Description

Every modern democratic state imprisons thousands of offenders every year, depriving them of their liberty, causing them a great deal of psychological and sometimes physical harm. Relationships are destroyed, jobs are lost, the risk of the offender being harmed by other offenders is increased and all at great expense to the state.

How can this brutal and costly enterprise be justified? Traditionally, philosophers answering this question have argued either that the punishment of wrongdoers is a good in itself (retributivism), or that it is a regrettable means to a valuable end, such as the deterrence of future wrongdoing, and thus justifiable on consequentialist grounds. This book offers a critical examination of those theories and advances a new argument
for punishment's justification, calling it the 'duty view'. On this view, the permission to punish offenders is grounded in the duties that they incur in virtue of their wrongdoing. The most important duties that ground the justification of punishment are the duty to recognize that the offender has done wrong and the duty to protect others against wrongdoing. In the light of these duties the state has a permission to punish offenders to ensure that they recognize that what they have done is wrong, but also to protect others from crime.

In contrast to other justifications of punishment grounded in deterrence, the duty view is developed in the light of a non-consequentialist moral theory: a theory which endorses constraints on the pursuit of the good. It is shown that it is
normally wrong to harm a person as a means to pursue a greater good. However, there are exceptions to this principle in cases where the person harmed has an enforceable duty to pursue the good. The implications of this idea are explored both in the context of self-defense, and then in the context of punishment. Through the systematic exploration of the relationship between self-defense and punishment, the book makes significant progress in defending a plausible set of non-consequentialist moral principles that justify the punishment of wrongdoers, and marks a significant contribution to the philosophical literature on punishment.

The Ends of Harm

The Moral Foundations of Criminal Law

Victor Tadros

Table of Contents

1. IntroductionThe Aims of Punishment 2. Justifying Punishment3. Recognition and Choice4. Against Desert5. The Limits of CommunicationMeans, Motivations, and Ends 6. Defending the Means Principle7. Wrongdoing and MotivationPermissibility, Harm, and Self-Defence 8. Choice, Responsibility, and Permissible Harm9. Conflicts and Permissibility10. Mistakes and Self-Defence11. Responsibility and Self-DefencePunishment and the Duties of Offenders 12. Punishment as a Remedy13. State Punishment14. Protection Against Punishment15. Proportionate Punishment

The Ends of Harm

The Moral Foundations of Criminal Law

Victor Tadros

Author Information

Victor Tadros, Professor of Criminal Law and Legal Theory, University of Warwick

Victor Tadros is Professor of Criminal Law and Legal Theory at the University of Warwick. Prior to his appointment at Warwick he held positions at the Universities of Aberdeen and Edinburgh. He has written on criminal responsibility, criminal offences, criminal trials, the presumption of innocence, just war theory, and various aspects of moral and political philosophy. He is currently engaged in a major project on criminalization with Antony Duff, Lindsay Farmer, Sandra Marshall, and Massimo Renzo, funded by the AHRC for which he is currently writing a book entitled Wrongs and Crimes.